work as if you live in the early days of a better nation
As a thank-you for speaking at the ESC/EWB Power Shift lecture series, I was given a Pembina Institute Wind Powered PC tag. That means that the energy equivalent of three years of PC usage has been bought for me from a windfarm.
I’d like to thank the folks at UofT for putting up with me for the evening, and buying me dinner at the (in)famous Peel Pub (would that be innfamous?). I enjoyed it, and I hope they did too.
I thought I might’ve had a couple of books waiting for me at the library yesterday, but all of these holds were waiting for me:
Looks like I’ve got a lot of reading to do in the next three weeks …
When: Thursday 10th March 2005, 6–7pm
Where: Bahen Centre BA 2179 (40 St George St., Toronto)
What: As part of the ESC/EWB Power Shift lecture series, I’m giving the following talk:
Stewart Russell currently works for Zephyr North, a wind energy consulting company. As an executive of Windshare, he contributed his years of experience in the Scottish wind industry to establishing the TREC wind turbine now installed at the CNE. His presentation will contrast the case of large, industrial wind farms with the technological solutions that are appropriate for developing countries. He will outline the special issues that arise when siting and designing modern wind farms in Ontario, and discuss the special challenges of creating simple, small wind turbines out of locally available materials.
above: Oracle Cycleworks‘ beautiful and light Omega USS recumbent. Image links to my mediocre photogallery.
I scooted around the Toronto International Bicycle Show last night. As usual, there were the usual huge amounts of offroad bikes, but there were a few surprises:
Lowriders were even more prevalent than last year. While they’re not the most practical of rides, they do have a certain panache that all those MTBs lack.
We were at Hugh’s Room last Thursday to hear The Wailin’ Jennys. Support was Gregory Hoskins, who has the voice of Jeff Buckley, and the sensibilities of Tom Waits.
The Jennys were on fantastic form. Their lineup has recently changed, with Annabelle Chvostek. We’d seen her open for Evalyn Parry a while back.
Canadian music is a small world. Earlier in the week, I’d been told not to miss The Duhks, but I couldn’t make the show. Wouldn’t you know it, but WJ Ruth Moody was the lead singer of Scruj MacDuhk, the precursor of The Duhks.
post ten items to Freecycle Toronto — get 60+ responses in under five minutes. Meep!
I heard Chris Coole, Erynn Marshall and Joe Phillips play The Cameron House last night. They were great!
Much to my surprise, the iRiver H120 actually recorded it quite well, even if I had to rack the microphone gain up to 100%.
Young Environmental Professionals’ Toronto chapter has re-opened. They’re having their first meeting on Wednesday February 9 2005, 6:30 – 9:00 pm at the Bow and Arrow Pub (yay! best beer ever!).
The speaker will be Joe Mihevc, talking about Transportation in the GTA and its environmental impact. Here’s the YEP Toronto Re-launch Event Flyer, which has the RSVP details.
Ah, the joys of home ownership: our main drain has done a bad thing again. A couple of years back, it was so choked with roots from a city tree that it flooded the basement with icky stuff. This time, it just made a wet patch on the floor.
It seems that the tree (planted about 50 years ago with the house) has got into the city’s pipe, partially collapsing it. We share this outlet with our neighbours, so it’s going to be more involved getting it fixed.
There are a couple of other houses in our short stretch of street that have needed this work done. Much as I like trees in the urban environment, when they get in your drains, it’s personal.
I just watched the documentary The End of Suburbia. It explains, with wit and verve, that the suburban North American lifestyle is something that we can’t sustain. It’s got everything you need in a documentary: earnest Canadians, James Howard Kunstler, Toronto’s wind turbine, Prelinger Archive footage, and even a Cory Doctorow namecheck in the credits.
We were at the Royal Winter Fair today. There were many cows.
http://www.easytree.org/torrents-details.php?id=12198
Circulatory System
Lee’s Palace, Toronto
13 April 2003
Audience recording by Stewart C. Russell
Sony ECM-909A microphone
-> Sharp MD-SR60 minidisc
-> analogue PC soundcard.
Tracks split with Audacity, normalized with ‘normalize’.
Compressed with ‘flac –best’
288 megabytes.
Track List:
1 Yesterday’s World
2 Should a Cloud Replace a Compass?
3 [door/days]
4 Joy
5 Round
6 The Lovely Universe
7 Diary of Wood
8 Outside Blasts
9 [now]
— Pause to repair Will’s guitar —
10 Lately/Realize
11 Days To Come (In Photographs)
12 Waves of Bark & Light
13 Away
Track names in [square brackets] are unclear from the recording, and are from the (still) upcoming album
Looks like David J. Patrick’s LinuxCaffe is actually going to happen in Toronto.
There’s a minor Canon vs Nikon thing going on at Toronto Photobloggers right now … as a D70 owner, I just know I’m right 😉
Our little branch of HSBC is closing. It’s the wee Dundas West branch, deep in the heart of Chinatown. Yes, they’re not very efficient, and the mall they are in isn’t the toniest I’ve seen, but that’s where we got our first accounts in Canada, our mortgage, and pretty much our entire Canadian financial history is there.
I’ll miss it, not least for the Baker’s Dozen donut shop next door.
At Word on The Street today, I met Jim Munroe, author of An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil. He was eating a particularly evil sandwich at the time.
Sorry, Jim, but you did choose the pose!